Featured Image Credit: Andrew Toth/Getty Images
Topics: Celebrity, Beauty, Social Media
Rhiannon Ingle
Topics: Celebrity, Beauty, Social Media
Denise Richards has been showered with praise for her transparent comments about her new facelift.
The 55-year-old Wild Things actress has opened up about having a facelift eight months ago, more than 30 years after first going under the knife for breast implants at 19, in an interview with Allure published last week (20 March).
"I wanted to put things back up, where they were before," she said, admitting that despite past procedures, surgery on her face felt 'terrifying'.
"Being in the public eye since my 20s, people know what I look like - a facelift is not something that I could hide."
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The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star began the process with Beverly Hills surgeon Dr Ben Talei, whom she was introduced to after her breast implant revision. That procedure followed an injury during Special Forces: World's Toughest Test, where both implants ruptured.
Richards said she fully trusted Talei and was pleased with the outcome, which included a temporal brow lift, upper blepharoplasty, a lip lift at the outer corners, and fat grafting.
"My face was in his hands," she said, adding that friends encouraged her not to hold back. "I said, 'You’re the artist. Whatever you want to do'," she recalled. "It is night and day. It's shocking, actually."
She also addressed how the facelift became public during her divorce from Aaron Phypers.
"Going through my divorce, my ex disclosed that I’d had a facelift," she said. "He had a photographer show up outside an appointment where I had some microneedling on my scars. So [my ex] told someone that I had a facelift, and said it was botched, which is really ridiculous."
"You know, I went back and forth about whether I was going to say anything about my facelift—um, he kind of let the cat out of the bag," she added. "I think I could have gotten away with, ‘Oh, she looks so much better after her divorce.’ I think I probably would've been able to get away with it—or not, I don't know."
Richards, who shares Lola, 20, and Sami, 22, with ex-husband Charlie Sheen, and Eloise, 14, with Phypers, also shared that her daughters initially weren’t keen on the idea.
"My oldest daughters were not happy that I was doing it," she said. "But I think now they understand, and they see that I still look like me. I think they were just worried, in general, of [me] having surgery."
She also reflected on a past disagreement with Sami over cosmetic work.
"...I didn't want [my daughter] Sami to get a nose job about two years ago. So when she said she didn't want me to get a facelift, she said, 'Mom, you did not want me to get a nose job.' I said, 'Yeah, but you were 20 years old, and that's your nose. That could change the way you look.
"'For me, he's just putting things back where they were. I'm not trying to change the way I look; I'm just trying to put things back. There's a little difference, in my opinion.'"
After catching light of Richards' candid remarks, fans rushed to social media to congratulate her for being so upfront about her cosmetic work.
One Instagram user praised: "I love celebrities that are honest about their plastic surgery. She looks great."
"Bless her for showing us that she did this instead of pretending it’s olive oil and yoga," penned a second as a third chimed in: 'I'm glad she did not claim it to be olive oil or 'clean diet'."
A fourth piped up: "Glad to see some celebs are being honest about surgery!"
"Wish more people would open up about the work they have had done," urged a fifth. "It would be so much healthier for women to understand it’s literal surgery and not just good genes and looks. It’s also a huge decision. Thank you so much for sharing."
A sixth gushed: "I love that she was public about this. So many people try to hide it like it’s something to be ashamed of."
"Being open and honest about this is so cool of Denise Richards," beamed another.
And a final Instagram user echoed: "I think, at the end of the day, it's about us feeling at home in our own bodies, & being able to kind of recognise ourselves in them as we age.
"If someone can do that without surgery, great. If surgery helps, it happens, great. Whatever helps us move through the world with our sense of self intact, ya know?"